


Like a Walk in the Park

by HelloAmHere



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Dogs, Fluff, Friendship, Gay Feelings, M/M, Mild Injury, Pining, San Francisco, lawn sports, video games - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-21
Updated: 2018-05-21
Packaged: 2019-05-09 13:52:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14717297
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HelloAmHere/pseuds/HelloAmHere
Summary: Louis needs a million dollars, needs a full redo and apology for Mass Effect 3, needs to redeem his birthday massage certificate. Louis does not need to sit exposed under an open sky and control his facial muscles for hours on end in front of his horrible helpless crush and three most merciless (best) friends. But Zayn is running out to the living room to hide all the controllers, so he’s got no freaking choice.//or, OT5 has a park day. Louis will probably survive.





	Like a Walk in the Park

**Author's Note:**

  * For [homosociallyyours](https://archiveofourown.org/users/homosociallyyours/gifts).



> This is based on a prompt that I was sent by [homosociallyyours,](http://homosociallyyours.tumblr.com/) which was to be a drabble and then became...longer, but is still a drabble in spirit. Thank you for this lovely idea, and may we both have many beautiful park days in our California home!
> 
> I have played three entire video games in my life and for some reason got fixed on the idea during this story so uhh, if there are grave errors, let's say this is an AU.
> 
> You can find me at [helloamhere](https://helloamhere.tumblr.com/) on tumblr.

The Idea comes at midnight on a Friday, and as such, should have been immediately recognizable as bad.

Louis’ defense, when he thinks about it later, is that it caught him in a vulnerable moment. It’s a crisp night, but the air has a hidden sweetness that confirms the good news from the weather alert: it’s going to be warm this weekend, warm and full of actual, visible, real-life sun instead of the off-white fog that’s been smothering the whole city for three weeks. San Francisco is catching warmth for the springtime before it sloughs it off in June gloom, and everybody feels giddy with it.

They’re out on the gorgeous back deck with their feet up on the mid-level railing ornaments, plowing through Friday night burritos and observing the world as far as the world is observable in the triangle of corner-to-corner Victorians that creates a protected backyard ringed by fairy lights. The backyard is a strange haven from the bustle of Castro. The backs of these painted wooden houses aren’t kept up as well as the fronts, all of them subdivided into three or more apartments sitting on top of each other like chickens roosting in an earthquake-prone coop.

The deck always makes Zayn philosophical and slightly judgmental.

“You _never_ go outside. Humans didn’t evolve to live that way,” he was insisting around mouthfuls of tortilla. “Humans evolved to look at green stuff on a regular basis. I read about it, it’s all deep in the nervous system.”

“I absolutely go outside, I’m outside right now,” Louis says, waving his burrito in an illustrative fashion toward the towering pine in their-and-their-neighbors’ backyard. There’s a firepit down there that they never make use of because neither of them know how to build a fire, and there’s a row of rosebushes from the very annoying upstairs neighbors who have two dogs and a kid that screams every morning on the way to school.

“You’re wearing two hoodies,” Zayn points out.

“There’s a wind,” Louis sniffs, delicately. Zayn snorts with the bone-deep disgust reserved for someone who still likes to pretend he’s an East Coast transplant. This is a long-standing argument, and Louis knows his part as he’s only been in the city for two years since moving from LA. He’s allowed to have opinions about bars but neither the weather nor the thermostat.

It’s a good night. Zayn’s holding a comfort cigarette between his thumb and his middle finger, but he hasn’t bothered to light it. Louis has seen Zayn carry unlit cigarettes for an entire month now, which might be the longest streak of quitting that Zayn’s ever maintained. Liam deserves whatever accolade goes out to new boyfriends who create healthier living for others through sheer sincerity.

Louis will think of something appropriate and get a custom plastic trophy for Liam. It was a good day for them all when he discovered that you could custom-order trophies from the local sports goods store. They’ve got one on the shelf over the sink that says Cleanest Roommate and it gets moved to the left or the right side to mark whose turn it is to do the dishes.

“All I’m saying is I only ever see you in front of screens anymore, or now in that stupid VR headset, you know? ‘S creepin’ me out, bro. You’ve turned into that lonely weird gamer in the basement, and you promised that wasn't gonna happen,” Zayn says.

“That’s offensive,” Louis says. “I’m a lonely weird _professional game designer_ and I would never let you move my consoles into the basement, good lord, what if it floods again? That’s thousands of dollars of equipment, Zayn. That’s the most expensive shit I own.”

Zayn mumbles something even more offensive into his rice. The rice itself is offensive and Louis will never change his mind on this point, carries the loss of french fry-filled Southern California burritos like a scar on his soul. But it’s a good job that brought him up here, the best job. It’s a tiny, quirky indie game company, and they’re a little like family already. They’ve got three games out and they’re surviving, and they made trophies for the design team for each one. When he got the offer Zayn had already been living in the Bay nine months earlier and had been looking for a roommate, like fate.

Louis loves his job tremendously, loves that somehow it welded all that dicking around in creative writing and photoshop and an encyclopedic knowledge of game genre into a viable career. He adores it even if he feels like he’s still faltering through the rest of unfamiliar adult life, taxes and street parking permits and regular dentist visits and a strange growing understanding of why you'd spend your Fridays with Netflix and Thai takeout instead of on Grindr.

“In addition I walk to muni every morning, fully outside, on the sidewalk,” Louis says, because he does, and Louis couldn’t have clawed his way into a gig that required arguing with software engineers every day without a well-worked pedantry muscle.

“Sometimes I even take my headphones out. Once there was a delay and I took a bus and the bus had windows. I learned so much that day. Z, did you know that the post office puts _boxes_ on the _corners_ for letters? How crazy is that, Z? Some people send letters.”

“Shut up, I’m allowed to worry about you,” Zayn says amicably, taking an enormous bite of burrito. This means that The Idea comes out in a garble of carne asada, and maybe that’s why Louis misses the fundamental terribleness of it.

“We should go to Golden Gate Park tomorrow, have a full day of it. You, me, Li, everybody. Show you what I mean about the trees. You’ll love it.”

“Sure, Golden Gate, classic,” Louis says expansively.

“Can’t trick the nervous system,” Zayn muses. Zayn’s been very influenced by Liam, who does a biology something or other in grad school at UCSF and uses a lot of words Louis has never even heard before. He’s going to look Latin biology things for the trophy, but he’s waiting for them to hit their six month so he knows it’s a sure thing.

No good giving trophies to ghosts. Louis and Zayn have been best friends since they were college roommates at UCLA and they run a very tight ship, both of them surprisingly shy for all their sarcasm and the kind of people to fall very hard for a select few and get crushed if they don’t return the favor. Nevertheless, Louis suspects that Liam’s going to become as much a part of their careful ecosystem as Niall, given how Zayn’s been doing disturbing things like smiling.

Park day. Whatever people did at parks. Balls and sunlight and like, pushing strollers or something. They’ll have to borrow somebody’s kids for that part but he’s sure they can manage. It’s midnight and he’s wearing his best friend’s hoodie over the team hoodie that they let him design (it’s a tyrannosaur in a jetplane that has nothing to do with their work and everything to do with how much Louis loves Calvin and Hobbes, was critically formed by Calvin and Hobbes in like, a philosophical, existential, sense of humor kind of way). The fairy lights create an optimistic glow over everything and he loves people.

And maybe, somewhere in the packed-up storage unit of his heart, he’s aware that Zayn’s got a point, and that never going out can’t be helping the vague way that he’s started to wonder if being a little bit lonely all the time is just life now.

 

**

 

Louis wakes up to fifty texts about their Saturday plans, which seems excessive until he sees that Niall’s part of the text chain. For Niall Horan, a conversation unembellished by reaction gifs is a failed conversation.

“Fuck,” Louis says as he yawns into consciousness and scrolls through the texts. He’s still groggy, so he’s ten Patrick Stewarts deep when he hits RuPaul and wonders when the hell Niall diversified his reaction gif portfolio. Then he looks at the sender, and realizes he’s fully and entirely screwed.

He can’t believe he didn’t realize—Zayn and Liam and “everybody,” “everybody” definitely includes Harry. Harry, with the eyes and the hands and the donkey laugh. Harry, with the long sideways smirk that turns Louis’ brain into a television channel catching static. _Harry_ , who’s Niall and Liam’s roommate and Gemma Styles’ little brother and horribly cool and ridiculously gay and absolutely, irrevocably untouchable.

If there’s one thing that can make Louis shrink back down into his thick Ikea comforter even on a gorgeous Saturday morning, it’s Harry Styles.

“Are you up?” Zayn yells, banging through the doorway without waiting for an answer and throwing himself on the bed.

“Nope,” Louis says into the pillow. His phone dings, probably with another Drag Race reference from Harry. Louis is gonna hurl.

“C’mon nature boy, we gotta get there before the crowds, gotta get a spot at the botanical garden. You’ll love it,” Zayn says, tickling him through the open side of his cut-out tank top. Louis yelps and hits out with his feet, knocking his spare blanket off the top and doing nothing at all to Zayn.

“Can’t do it, sorry, I got work to do just remembered, bring me back some grass and I’ll put it in a vase,” Louis says.

“What? Don’t be a dick, I know you haven’t,” Zayn says. He smells like Louis’ citrus body gel and his wet hair is getting Louis’ cheek damp from where he’s snuggling in. Zayn sounds unreasonably perky this morning. Louis blames all the _healthy living_ and the way that Zayn and Liam are in the buzzy couple stage where every weekend has plans that are exhaustively enthusiastic, stuff like _we’re doing Tartine and then an urban hike and catching the craft fair down near the water_.   

“I have,” Louis says insistently, “I’ve got an entire dungeon to build out. We thought the level was finished but the user testing _hated_ this last puzzle and we’ve gotta make the entire thing slower so people can catch onto the change in the physics. It means an entire new room. It’s very complicated and I need to draw a lot of bricks. No park for me.”

“Bull, Shit,” Zayn says, slowly, emphasizing each syllable. He rolls on top of Louis and all the air gets pushed out of Louis’ chest with a _woosh._ Zayn rocks back and forth warningly.

“What’s wrong?” he asks.

“Nothing!” Louis wails. “I gotta work!”

“That’s funny, because what I thought I heard was that you gotta sit on a blanket and get high with me,” Zayn says. He moves on to pulling Louis’ hair, a bridge too far.

Louis rolls over and shoves Zayn, who obligingly slides off. He looks bright and happy and unbothered in a cute orange tank top, like somebody with a boyfriend and a perfect fresh fade in his undercut. Louis can already feel that it’s gonna be a bad hair day for himself, all tangled around the back of his ears.

“Zayn,” Louis says, “Zaynie, I can’t be out in the sunlight on the grass for an entire day with these people. Leave me to a live burial under pixelated bricks.”

“Thanks,” Zayn says, disbelievingly. “Can’t come out with your best friends? You love us no matter what weirdass headspace you woke up in.”

“Zayn,” Louis says, and Zayn looks at him with a dawning realization that melts into an embarrassing amount of pity. He tugs at Louis’ hair, a tangle of knots already even though Louis hasn’t done anything but sleep.

“Oooh,” Zayn drawls, “With _Harry._ You don’t wanna go to the park with _Harry.”_

“I have to draw a dungeon,” Louis says resolutely. It’s a flimsy excuse at best and Zayn knows it because he knows way too much about Louis’ working process. Louis’ working process is basically his entire life this point, and spreads out over half of their living room to boot. Obviously they wouldn’t be spending craft time on _details_ at this point even if they did need to extend the room, they’ll just bump around the frameworks they’ve already got approved and nobody will care anyway because there are launches and deadlines and it’s a manic ride to the finish line every time. It’s the only thing that Louis has ever been good at, probably, and he loves it.

Zayn pokes him in the cheek.

“So that’s still on, huh?” Zayn asks. Louis lets himself flop all the way back down, and thinks that the wail he sends into his pillow is enough of an answer.

 _Harry Styles._ Harry Styles, who lives with Niall and Liam in the fantastic house that Niall’s family has owned since forever on one of the ridiculous hills in Potrero. Harry Styles, whose sister Gemma was Louis’ best work buddy and co-conspirator until she took a gig in Seattle and swapped out on Niall’s lease with her younger brother. Harry Styles, who is…everything that makes Louis feel insecure and hot all over, beautiful and charming and interesting with just enough weird to be unique, and so flirtatious, and just so, so nice. He’s too young even if he weren’t Gemma’s _little brother_ and weren’t the kind of person who has a full matching kitchenware set and a bookshelf full of beat poetry, whereas Louis has been getting by with Zayn’s furniture for years and is avoiding shopping for a new mattress because he has no idea how.

Louis is a lot of things but he’s not delusional, not about what kind of guys get the interest of guys like Harry Styles. Not guys like Louis, who get tongue-tied on dates and only came out halfway through _senior year of college_ so it’s still all a fucking terrifying mystery, really, like waking up in the middle of a movie action sequence. Guys like Louis aren’t highbrow or cultured or suave or anywhere near the height-muscle ratio that guys like Harry are seen next to.

The trouble is that no matter how much Louis knows this, Harry’s so relentlessly attractive that it reduces Louis to something with just around the social acuity of a lump of playdoh every time they interact. He can’t convince himself out of this crush, stupid as it is, so Louis’ current strategy is to avoid Harry completely until his fixation blows over, or he hits retirement age and can finally hole himself up in his parents’ boring Brentwood house to die with his comic books.

“It’s gonna be fine,” Zayn soothes, patting through his hair and blind to the plummeting depth of Louis’ crisis, and good for him. “Better than fine. This is exactly what the two of you need. Just use my deep conditioner in the shower, ok?”

Louis needs a million dollars, needs a full redo and apology for Mass Effect 3, needs to redeem his birthday massage certificate. Louis does not _need_ to sit exposed under an open sky and control his facial muscles for hours on end in front of his horrible helpless crush and three most merciless (best) friends. But Zayn is running out to the living room to hide all the controllers, so he’s got no freaking choice.

 

**

 

There are some people you want with you in an apocalypse, and Liam is front and center in the first draft. Liam is polite and strong and thoughtful, and has brought six separate bags of equipment into Zayn and Louis’ tiny split-Victorian two bedroom apartment. He’s carried them all in his own two arms like it was nothing. Louis is extremely glad that Liam is dating his roommate so that he can benefit without having to _deal_ with everything that is the Liam philosophy of living, because it looks exhausting.

“All right,” Liam says, after cheerily hugging Louis and then kissing Zayn in a way that makes the rest of them look upward to the ceiling, as for salvation.

“Li told me to make sure that everybody has water but he didn’t want to ask because he thinks he nags too much,” Niall says when they separate at long last.

“Oh I did not,” Liam clucks. He's a good liar except for the twinge in his right eyelid that looks like it's asking _why me? I'm only trying to take care of the entire world._

“Yeah, you did. You made me drink this salty hangover nutrition thing at seven am. Put it on my bedside table,” Harry says. Harry's come in behind all the bags and Niall’s stack of lawn chairs. He’s already leaning on the wall like a spineless model, and if he's hungover it looks good, sleepy huge eyes and a casual sun-warmed tan on his forehead.

“Well, I had spares,” Liam says.

“You sat on the bed until I finished it,” Harry drawls.

Louis swallows hard. Drawing bricks makes him feel like he's going out of his mind and yet he actually wishes he had a new dungeon concept to do instead of this, this just feeling so wanting and so awkward and so annoyed, for an entire precious Saturday. Harry hasn't bothered to button his shirt _at all._

Zayn, who knows his boyfriend, produces his and Louis’ water bottles and earns himself another full-on makeout.

They’re on a schedule, apparently, so they head out without getting distracted by the usual gaming conversation between Niall and Louis. Niall was a fan of Louis’ strange, artsy little indie game company before Louis even knew that they _had_ fans, and it was instant friend chemistry when Gemma brought him along to the SF con, Zayn joining that night for pizza and trash talk over Niall’s impressively bad first person shooter skills.

Harry falls back to the tail end of their basket-wielding, chair-dropping caterpillar of not-outdoorsmen, possibly to get away from the introduction segment of Liam’s twenty minute lecture on sunscreen.

“Hey Lou,” Harry says, with a smile. Louis has no idea where _Lou_ came from. He’d blame Gemma except that Gemma mostly calls him _Twitchy,_ because she’s never gonna let him live down the time he jumped two feet in the air during an action sequence test in the viewing room.

“Hey,” Louis says, cool as a cucumber, totally fine, he's got this. He walks straight into the side table they keep in the hallway for keys and sunglasses.

“We’re not even out of the house, you can't fake an injury to get out of this,” Zayn calls back immediately, without even looking.

“Dumb place for a table,” Louis yells. The table’s fine, he’s just knocked the keys to the ground and he’s had to scramble on his knees for them because he pitched over like an idiot. He’s pretty sure Harry’s still up there, probably laughing at him.

“You put it there!” Zayn says. Louis can’t _hear_ Harry laughing, so maybe he’s doing it silently. Not that Harry’s ever laughed silently in the whole (torturous) time that Louis has known him.

“Well you shouldn’t have let me,” Louis says. He gets up. Harry is, unfortunately, still there in the hallway like he’s waiting for Louis before he walks out, hands in the pockets of prepster blue linen shorts that make him look tan, all ready for the park. There’s a little smile on his face that’s sincere and not mocking at all because oh yeah, he's so fucking _nice._

Harry’s a human being, probably, but to Louis he’s something else. He’s like...kryptonite, like a negative fifty strength spell, like an unpredictable roll on the ability damage dice that will always land on something very bad for Louis.

Louis hides behind Liam’s baskets. Stupid sun, deciding to come out. Stupid San Francisco, with its eighteen hundreds commitments to large urban parks. Stupid weekend park day.

 

**

 

Zayn makes them _walk_ all the way to Golden Gate, which Louis has definitely never done before and didn’t even know you could do. It turns out it connects a bunch of the scattered familiarities from various nights out into one path—there’s the pizza place that Niall likes and the brewery they had brunch at once and of course, colorful street murals on almost every block.

They pass the board game store on Divis, and Louis forgets about the group for long enough to press up on the window because there’s a lovely little extension for Machi Koro that he wants, no, he _needs._ He restrains himself from going in but not from scrutinizing the cover art through the glass.

“You like games?” Harry asks, from where he’s followed Louis and now stands at the window, too.

Louis looks at him, suspicious. It could be a trap, after all.

“Of course, obviously you like games,” Harry says, stumbling over the words in his funny, devastating accent, _obvrshly_. Louis blinks at him. Harry's British, just to make it all worse. Harry has trouble getting the words out sometimes and it’s charming and sweet rather than awkward, at least Louis thinks so.

“I mean, I didn’t know you like board games, real games?” Harry asks.

“Video games _are_ real games,” Louis says, automatically, the protest just coming out of him by default and a little too biting. Harry blushes, for some unfathomable reason. Louis makes the mistake of looking directly at it and of course it shatters him, a light spread of pink along the tops of Harry’s cheekbones that he would give anything to feel under his fingertips, to cause with the rub of his scruff and the nip of his teeth. God, he's a moron and Harry and the entire universe can see it, he's sure.

“Sorry, ‘course,” Harry says, “Physical games, that's all I meant, didn't know if it would be like, too basic for you or summat.”

“Yeah, well, no,” Louis says, recovering his ability to make words and everything. He’s really got to get his fucking act together if he’s gonna get through a _day_ with Harry Styles right in front of his face.

“A lot of board games are really complex. I mean, there are ones that take all day. I like all sorts of games,” Louis says. He's pretty sure that he just admitted he plays board games all day. God.

Harry nods, like this is fascinating information. “That’s cool,” he offers shyly.

“Harry is simply terrible at board games,” Niall says, coming up to tap at the glass, like Machi Koro and Settlers of Catan (Star Trek Edition; Louis has that version) are animals and they’re going to interact with him.

“Am not,” Harry says weakly in the manner of someone who is, indeed.

“Harry can’t remember the rules to monopoly,” Niall sighs. “If only somebody could teach him.”

“It’s all right there on the board,” Louis says doubtfully.

Harry flat-out kicks Niall in the shin. Louis frowns because all of this feels excessive, maybe like some kind of roommate ingroup joke that he’s not part of, and he turns away from the window in a bid to get them back on pilgrimage to this mythical park.

 

**

 

“Ok, _this_ is Golden Gate,” Louis guesses.

“Nope,” Niall says, muffled from where his face is buried in one of Liam’s baskets, Liam holding it open patiently. Niall’s looking for a spare sweater, because they’re walking in the shade and Louis’ LA-raised body hates it and Harry looked over at his goosefleshed arms and frowned and said “Who brought the extra jacket for Louis?”

Louis had been about to say _no one, obviously,_ but apparently Liam had.

“This is actually the panhandle,” Niall says smugly, throwing a hoodie over Louis’ head. It’s a thick blue one with a line drawing of Darth Vader; Louis approves. Liam can continue to be Zayn’s boyfriend.

“It goes right to the park, don’t worry,” Zayn says.

“There’s a park that….leads to the park?” Louis asks. “This city is ridiculous.”

“Have you really never been here?” Harry asks. Louis shrugs, looks straight ahead and tries not to make it obvious that he’s having trouble putting his left arm through the sleeve and walking at the same time. Harry’s hand twitches, like he’s gonna reach out and help.

Louis skips a few steps forward mostly on purpose; he’s in no mental state where touching Harry’s hand, even by accident of Harry's politeness, will do anything good for him.

“I spend a lot of weekends working, or going home,” Louis admits.

“This is your home,” Niall corrects. Niall is a big Bay Area evangelist. Louis isn’t so sure.

“I run through this park on weekday mornings,” Harry says.

“Of course you do,” Louis says. Harry’s legs are miles long. Harry looks up at the trees and Louis looks up at Harry.

“Just me and the scooters and my nineties hip-hop playlist,” Harry says, stretching his arms up to the trees, and making his unbuttoned shirt fall open over his plethora of tattoos and long torso. Harry, being from England, never seems to be cold. Louis chews on the string of Liam’s hoodie, like it’ll make anything easier.

 

**

 

The park finally turns into The Park, across a clustered intersection of roads that are busy even on a Saturday morning (Louis accidentally grabs Niall's arm when a particularly noisy truck goes by and then covers his indoor-cat-anxiety by sprinkling water over Niall's head and yelling _Liam says hydration is key!_ ), and down a long uneven sidewalk full of fit jogging people.

They set up in front of the Arboretum. It's a gracious spread of land in a dip off the side of the park, organized around long rows of flora and the charming white building, and it looks to be a good homebase for idleness. Zayn flops out next to a bed of purple flowers, like a modern fairytale prince with a nose ring.

“This is exactly what I wanted,” Zayn says with deep satisfaction. Louis flops out next to him and can’t find it in his heart to disagree. Zayn scratches his scalp and maybe his hair is a mess but at least it’s clean and it smells good and it’s actually pretty soft from Zayn’s conditioner. It smells good here in general, all green and fresh and tree-filled, like grass and summer. Liam brought croissants for them all and Louis already ate two on the way in.

Liam and Niall and Harry are setting things up from Liam’s baskets, which have a bottomless Mary Poppins quality to them. There are blankets, there are snacks, there’s yet another jacket in case the breeze gets to Louis, there are three different lawn chairs and five different types of lawn sports.

“Soccer?” Louis asks, hopefully. There are a distressing number of what look like croquet mallets. Louis is _not_ about to be put through an entire day of trying to not look at Harry Styles’ ass _and_ playing croquet.

“Of course,” Liam says, pulling a soccer ball out of one of the bags and rolling it to Louis. Louis balances it on his toes like a reverse circus seal. He'd make a better circus seal than useless gay twenty-something who still gets read too bro-y even in SF, with his jock sports and nerdery and lack of floral prints.

“I’ve seen all the Fifa in your living room, and the elementary school trophies,” Liam says.

“I didn’t know that, let’s have a kick around,” Niall says from where he’s busy trying to lure a neighboring dog into their encampment with a can of La Croix. The dog looks vaguely affronted, and wanders away.

“Also high school, where there were real fields and injuries and drills, and stuff,” Louis says in a feeble attempt to make himself look less like somebody who saves every piece of paraphernalia from his hobbies. It’s possible that the trophy obsession was seeded way back then, when triumphs came with small golden figurines that you could take home and use to stage elaborate scenarios with your action figures. Anyway, Louis likes soccer, and he’s kind of forgotten that since moving to SF.

“Aw, elementary school Louis winning soccer trophies, what an image, you must have been so tiny,” Harry says.

“And very aggressive,” Zayn says, “The miniature menace. I think one of the trophies is _best biter.”_

Louis whaps Zayn on the shoulder with a lazy hand. “I never,” he grumbles, “Best Kicker, Z, it says _Best Kicker.”_

“I would’ve saved that trophy, that’s well done, being good at kicking in football,” Harry says, grinning.

Louis blushes all the way down to the deep v-neck of the thin tank top he shouldn’t have worn and only picked out of vanity. He looks up at the sky so he can’t dwell on whether Harry’s actually as fond as he sounds or he’s mocking, thinking that Louis is some kind of obsessive weirdo dork. Apparently when it’s sunny, there are actual fluffy clouds just like in the movies. Wild.

“I vote naps instead of rehashing about the traumas of childhood,” Louis says. It’s not a hard sell.

 

**

 

They spend an hour and a half doing absolutely nothing, despite Liam’s best suggestions for sports, yoga, and/or sudoku. Instead, everyone sprawls on the blankets and stares at the sky and it’s pretty wonderful.

Niall tells some long, rambly story about his family vacation, tossing a dangerously heavy croquet ball in the air over his stomach and only occasionally hitting himself with it. Zayn’s quiet, which is Zayn’s usual mode, but he’s braiding long pieces of grass together and resting his feet in Liam’s lap. Liam is the only one listening to Niall, and Harry--Louis is trying to not pay attention to what Harry’s doing but it’s always a lost battle.

Harry’s got a New Yorker magazine and a broad-brimmed hat that succeeds more in pushing his curls into his face than anything else. He’s been flipping idly through an article on droughts and migration, or maybe reading the comics, Louis can’t tell. Louis is reading the comics upside down until Harry glances up and Louis is caught in the laser beam of Harry’s green eyes, way too bright and a little watery from the sunshine, startlingly intense, like he can see right through the faceplate of Louis’ skull and into the soft mush of brain matter that’s whirring around thinking _you’re so pretty, you probably think all kinds of interesting things about droughts, please tell me about them, let’s take a trip together and have all kinds of experiences, I’d learn to go outside for you._  

Louis drops his face down into the picnic blanket, and hopes it looks sufficiently nap-like.

 

**

 

It turns out that croquet is _great._ The fundamental game engine of croquet is obsessing over tiny and erratically frustrating lawn physics, and when it’s not your turn, which is most of the time, you lean on your mallet like it’s an elegant statement cane and chastise your friends in the best Croquet Accent you can come up with. This is the kind of game Louis can get behind.

The accents become increasingly faux-British, which has the bonus effect of making Harry so flustered he sits down and scowls into the staff of his mallet, chewing a piece of grass after hitting his ball in a series of random direction. Like this, Harry really looks like _Gemma’s little brother._ Louis wants extremely much to wander over and let the tips of his fingers drift into Harry’s curls, maybe pull on one.

“I thought you’d all be better at _handling_ _balls,”_ Niall says. He’s said it approximately fifteen times since the game began. It has not become funnier via repetition.

Liam ignores him and sends his ball through the tiny wicket and into the next one. Liam has a straw hat with a ribbon round the crown, and looks like he’s about to go punting down the Thames. Zayn keeps looking at it, and cracking out that lovely Zayn smile.

“That’s not a conversation you wanna start,” Louis says. He’s wandered a few feet closer to Harry, he’s cursed. Harry’s hat is _not_ straw, it’s black felt and looks more runway than anything. It’s fallen off behind him and it’s rolling a little in the breeze and the downhill.

Zayn slouches up for his turn and wallops his ball right off their makeshift croquet court, startling a picnic of heterosexuals.

“Whoops,” Zayn drawls, all eyebrow arches, as they glare.

“You all good?” Louis asks, sitting down next to Harry. What can he say? He’s a masochist. Harry tosses torn up grass at him and smiles and it’s so pretty that Louis sways backwards. Harry’s smiles are authentic and never self-conscious, Harry’s smiles are a little too wide for his face and Louis can’t deal with it.

“All good,” Harry says, but his smile has dropped off too fast. “Just bad at sports. Games. You know. This kind of thing.”

Louis doesn’t know, but he uses the social moment to creep a little closer in the grass. Niall’s hit a ball into Liam’s and they’re engaged in some kind of croquet duel that involves more heckling than action.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you bad at anything,” Louis confesses, surprised that Harry would even say such a thing. Nobody could be worse than Zayn at croquet, anyway. All the wickets that Zayn put in the ground have already fallen down.

Harry ducks his head down, looks at his lap. “Thanks,” he says softly. “I have no idea why I care that I’m losing, it’s stilly. I’ve never even played croquet before. Maybe it’s like, reminding me I’m still finding my feet here, to be honest. I thought since Gemma was here for so long...it’s silly.”

Louis has a god-awful compulsion to touch his hair _again._ It’s right there, falling over his ears and onto his cheek.

“You _are_ good at things,” Louis says, unsure how croquet or games or whatever turned into everything else, but unable to stop himself. “You do all that political analysis stuff with Niall at your work, I don’t really even understand it. You run, apparently. You’ve moved from a whole other country and you’ve already got so many friends, seems like. I only moved from the other half of _this state_ and I don’t even know how to get to Golden Gate park from our apartment.”

Maybe it’s way too much and too sincere, suddenly, as assessment of Harry on way too high of a level for what they were actually talking about. He holds himself back from some of the worst things, at least, things like, _it doesn’t matter if you can aim a fucking ball, you’ve got plans every weekend, I’ve heard how Niall teases you about the guys who hit on you when you’re out, I've heard you play guitar and talk about art, you're magnetic, you know, you're good at everything._

But Harry’s full-on smiling and it feels like progress, like the sun shining on Louis’ neck.

“You’re so nice,” Harry says, in his tremendously sexy accent. “You’re always so nice. I am terrible at this game despite my origin and I can’t even see my croquet ball from here. I think that dog ate it?”

Louis looks where he’s pointing. “That dog weighs four pounds, he can’t possible have,” Louis says.

“Who cares if you’ve never been to the park?” Harry asks. Louis shrugs a shoulder, wishes he hadn’t said that. Harry spreads his arm wide and gestures towards all the flowers and Louis tries to not fantasize about picking them and dumping them in Harry’s lap, wildly.

“Welcome to the park, Lou,” Harry says, all sweetness. He’s looking at Louis like he’s pleased and surprised that Louis came over, like he’s considering crawling closer from _his_ patch of grass. It must be Louis’ imagination running wild, park-colored glasses warping everything into his fantasies.  

“You’ve missed _two turns,”_ Niall yells, but then he’s felled by an overeager four pound chihuahua.

 

**

 

They get hot dogs and beers from the stand on the corner of the entrance into the de Young. Liam reapplies sunblock on Niall’s face and gets a comment from a passing mom about being a _good dad,_ which sends them all into hysterics that last a full ten minutes. Niall and Louis make up a chant about it, at which point Liam and Zayn go back to their pile of blankets and chairs and sports equipment, ostensibly to keep guard on Liam’s park fortress but, Louis is sure, to soothe Liam’s ruffled feelings and reassure him that he can do not-dadlike-things, _with tongue._ Louis hopes that the children have all scattered for lunch.

Louis finds himself with only Niall and Harry, and since Niall is distracted by every single four-legged creature that goes by, it’s kind of like being alone with Harry. At some point Louis has started to feel like he might be capable of holding a full conversation with Harry, though, and he blames the whole park situation for this delusion.

“If you haven’t been to Golden Gate before,” Harry says, slowly and charmingly, where he’s somehow ended up on Louis’ side again (is Louis genuinely cursed? Last week he spilled a coffee on the muni and it got all over the shoes of a very natty MBA headed to his SOMA tech job--Louis rather thinks this should get him _blessed_ instead of _cursed)._

“Yes?” Louis prompts. He’s made bold by beer and hotdogs and croquet championships. There’s a man rollerblading in the bike lane and he’s wearing a feather boa and he’s carrying a cat on his shoulder. It’s got to be a Saturday tradition, because he’s stopping every few feet to say hi to people. It makes Louis feel like every kind of person is ok, which is a relief of a thing to feel with Harry Styles on his side.

“Then you haven’t seen the boats!” Harry finishes, treacle-slow and hopelessly endearing, clasping his hands.

“The boats?” Louis asks, skeptical. “You mean the ocean? Because I’ve seen the ocean. I’ve also seen the _real_ ocean, which is south of here, and warmer, and you can actually surf there.”

“And wouldn’t I love to see you surf,” Harry says gaily, eyes too green for this earth. He must just be teasing, but Louis bites his own tongue extremely hard, on accident.

“But I meant the toy boats. There’s a pond up here where people sail remote boats, and I like to watch them. Want to see?”

Louis doesn’t know if he does want to see (frankly, Louis’ mind is still skittering over the surfing comment, and will probably do so for the next week at least), but, that’s where they end up. Niall’s acquired a golden retriever and a prissy French bulldog, and he’s trying to teach them tricks by demonstrating the tricks himself. There are a dozen toy boats on the pond and a lot of people who look very serious about them, fiddling with controllers and making idle chit chat about sailing conditions.

It’s not unlike watching people play games, and Louis will always do that. They sprawl out on a park bench with chipped green paint. Harry and Louis keep….talking, like real people who can talk.

The really aggravating bit is that when Louis lets himself imagine, when they find a moment like this--the aggravating bit is Louis actually thinks he and Harry could be great together _._ They’ve got a similar sense of humor and a similar love for storytelling, even if Harry’s tastes run more toward the modernism classics that Louis skipped in every single lit class he’s ever taken. Louis gets along so splendidly with Gemma that they used to joke about how perfect they’d be as a couple if Louis weren’t so gay. Harry’s really like her, so like her that Louis can hear the cadence of his familiar banter with Gemma hinting around the edges as they talk about remote control boats, remote control airplanes, whether or not anybody has ever made remote control garbage trucks (Harry won’t let him pull out his phone and google it, but Louis makes a mental note to pitch a miniature garbage truck race as a bonus game for their next launch).

Harry is not, of course, like Gemma in that he’s got shoulders that Louis can’t stop eyeing, has got a deep voice like sends prickles of awareness down Louis’ body all the way to his toes.  

If...if things had felt different. If Harry  hadn’t been the most charismatic person in their whole social circle, if Louis hadn’t seen the twisting face of distaste that Harry made when he described the guy at work who had that awful, awkward, lingering crush on him. Maybe especially, Louis hadn’t heard Niall and Zayn, that night six or seven months ago, out on the deck. They loved him, and they were his best friends in the world, and it had still been so casually and unconsciously cruel to hear his dating insecurities laid out in a casual aside. _Louis falls too hard for the wrong people,_ Zayn had said, and if anyone would know, it was Zayn.  

He’s taken it all as the warning that it was, intended or not.

 

**

 

“There are not bison in this park,” Louis says.

“No there are,” Harry says. Louis doesn’t know whether to believe anything Harry says, because he’s discovered that Harry knows that his accent renders even the most preposterous things believable.

“There really are,” Niall says with a grin, rustling Louis’ hair. Louis wraps an affectionate arm around Niall and they sway together on the sidewalk. Harry slouches slightly in front of them, kicking at little pebbles on the walk.

Harry’s beautiful, somehow more than Louis can visualize when he’s not looking at him, so it's like an assault when he does. Louis wants to touch every single part of him including his elbows and behind his ears. He mostly struggles with the impulse to reach out and touch Harry’s hair, which looks so soft and curls around his ears and sticks down his neck at the bottom because it’s getting hot.

“There are bison!” Louis exclaims, startled out of his pining by the force of vagary. He tramps through a rolling bank of twiggs and through a ditch so he can press up against the fence and gape at the big fuzzy beasts. They’re clustered together in the shade at the far end of a very large enclosure, looking as confused as any tourist is to find them there.

“Wasn’t lying,” Harry says. Louis glances at him. Harry’s curled his fingers around the fence wires next to Louis, and he’s waded through the ditch to grin at the bison despite the fact that the brush has left long red scratches up his pretty calves.

“Hi, bisons,” Harry croons. Louis sighs, deeply and resoundingly, but lucky for him there’s a loud gaggle of schoolkids coming to yell at the bison, and it provides cover.

 

**

 

It’s gotten sunny, too sunny for everybody else’s delicate San Francisco complexions, so they set up a shade tent back at the Arboretum homebase. Shade tents, apparently, are small portable tents that people like Liam bring on park days. Louis has only ever experienced triple-layer, desert winter night-proof tents within the context of the camping trips he and Zayn struggled through every winter in college, when the sporting clubs organized a group bus out to Joshua Tree and Zayn convinced Louis it would be great to get high in the desert and look at the stars (and in his defense, it had been).

Liam’s shade tent is purple with pink trimmings. It delights Louis, because Liam is so masc so much of the time that Louis worries a little bit about Liam, with his midwestern family and occasional look of awe when they walk around the Castro. But he’s got Zayn now, so Louis thinks he’ll be ok.

Zayn crawls into the shade tent immediately, just the soles of his grass-stained feet visible from the mesh entrance. Niall and Liam engage in a hunting expedition for more beer.

Louis, on the other hand, is starting to sprawl out in the sun like the desert lizard he is, limbs loosening, on his stomach on the blanket. He’s soaking up a tan with Liam’s hoodie bundled underneath his head, cheek turned to the side with his fingers curled under his chin. If he keeps his eyes half-open he can look at all the tiny details on the little sprigs of grass around the blanket. It smells like dry, fruitful dirt and flowers.

“Another nap? You’re a pro at park napping already,” Harry smirks over the cover of his second New Yorker, but it’s a testament to the magical quality of this day that Louis just flips Harry off like they’re able to _joke_ instead of thinking that Harry’s mocking him for being lazy.

“Been a long week, we’ve got a game release coming up and I’ve just had, days and days of meetings,” Louis admits.

Meetings are objectively the worst. Louis is most comfortable when he gets to spend four days of the week spinning stories together in his head and only sacrifices the last day to talking to other people. He suspects that all the work meetings might be part of why Zayn’s been worried, that the launch has been draining him more than usual and he’s been slipping into a bad habit of coming home and plugging into another screen just to distract himself from stress.

Harry’s hand settles on the soft dip of his lower back, just under his ribs, and Louis jumps.

“Do you mind?” Harry asks, which is an insane question to accompany what he’s doing which is, apparently, volunteering a backrub, tentatively smoothing over Louis’ tank top, and making all of the blood freeze in Louis’ heart. “I’m pretty good at them?”

“Uhh, if you like,” Louis says, unable to move for fear of having a heart attack.

“So what’s been so hard at work?” Harry asks, spreading his hands down Louis’ shoulderblades. They can pretty much span the width of it, they’re so stupidly big. Louis has seen Harry carry upwards of five things in one hand including a phone and Niall’s giant jumble of keys and a mug of coffee, so he doesn’t know why he’s so shocked by this.  

“Mostly, lore?” Louis squeaks. The squeak is muffled by blanket. Hopefully.  

“What’s lore?” Harry asks, and his tone is _so_ dangerous. It’s teasing and light and entrapping all at once. It’s the tone that Louis used to interpret as annoyance but now that he’s spent a whole day with Harry and he’s got Harry’s actual hands on his actual body, it’s entirely different, magnetic. It’s like something to slip on, like an unexpected ice patch in the middle of slush. Except nothing about Harry could ever be cold.

“It’s like, the story background? The…like sometimes there’s a whole world in games, you know, and that world has myths, we call that lore,” Louis says.

He’s beginning to become rather acutely aware that he sounds like everything that he is, like a nerd, like an incurable dork who never fully grew up, like somebody whose shoes have holes in them and who probably shouldn’t have skipped shaving this morning even though he never shaves on the weekends. Like somebody who maybe doesn’t even _want_ to fully grow up because he really _likes_ being a dork. Even if it means that guys like Harry won’t ever see him like _that,_ like it could be, that massages in the park under the sun are a blissful daydream that he’s stealing to remember later.

“Do you create all that for your games? The lore?” Harry asks.

“Kind of, yeah, pretty much,” Louis says. Harry’s kneading his shoulders and it’s like melting.

“We’re not exactly making epics yet, we’re such a small new company, but, we’ve got plans…I mean, we’ve got this series of small fantasy games and they’re starting to sell well and it’s really exciting, I just _know_ we can keep them going. There’s a whole story about, like, a civil war in this country and _I_ think it ties the narrative together if we can do a whole reveal about the villain coming from the other lineage of kings, you know, like maybe they end up reconciling. But to make it work we’ve gotta start seeding the story _now._ And then there’s a debate about whether that’s distracting in a small game, and we’ve got...you know, there’s engineering constraints, and we’ve never got enough time. But I want us to think long-term, so, it’s been a real fight to save the worldbuilding.”

He’s rambling, and Harry’s hands are still pressing into him, pressing him down into the blanket in a way that makes him feel pliant and docile and loose and liable to spill out all the guts of his worries and dreams and dumb, multi-year fantasy arcs that he carries around in his head.

“That sounds worth fighting for,” Harry says, “That sounds epic, Lou.”

Harry, who is not a dork, can get through two entire New Yorkers on a saturday voluntarily. Harry’s got endlessly pretty eyelashes and skin that looks radiant, on this gorgeous day, and while hungover, and in the middle of the night, and always. He’s cultured and silly and weird and _charming,_ and Louis has had it on good authority (Niall’s) that Harry has to just about push men off when they go out. Not just to clubs, but like, at cafes _._

“Well even if it was a long week, sounds like a great job. Sounds really fun,” Harry says encouragingly.

“It’s, it’s fine, it’s fun, I think it’s fun,” Louis says, “I don’t know, I know it’s also dumb.”

Harry’s hands still for a second, which is somehow _worse_ because now Louis can feel the heat and heft of them, just there, like essence of Harry leaching through his thin tank top.

“It’s not dumb,” Harry says, “It’s dumb that I’ve never played one of your games. How have I never played one of your games?”

“Too busy being in the actual out of doors, I bet,” Louis says.

“I could come over, what about tonight? I’m awful but, you could teach me how to play, like a masterclass,” Harry says because this day isn’t hard enough, he has to be saying that too.

Louis twists up, out from under his hands, sitting on his side to see Harry’s face, unable to stay still anymore. Harry sits back on his heels, biting his lower lip. Harry’s lower lip is reddened when he lets it go, the faintest line of a teethmark pressed into the soft skin below the lip, and Louis feels such a rush of panic that he blurts without thinking.

“No, you shouldn’t,” Louis says, pushing up to his knees and then getting clumsily to his feet, “That would be boring.”

It spills out stupidly, and Harry looks a little stunned.

“Ok,” Harry says.

“Ok,” Louis echoes, with a fake laugh, trying to sound normal.

The fact of the matter is that if Harry came over after today Louis is pretty sure he’d see the awful crush spread out over Louis’ face. Louis wouldn’t be able to stop himself doing something dumb, putting that horrible disgusted look on Harry’s face like the one he had talking about his coworker. It’s cracking through all the weak spots in Louis’ body as it is and Louis just can’t handle it. He can’t handle the way Harry clenches his hand with all its rings into a fist on his knee and the gentle breeze in Harry’s hair.

“I’m gonna find Liam,” Harry says suddenly, pushing to his feet, and then he’s gone, walking quickly through flowerbeds, up to the sidewalk.

“Well, that was embarrassing,” says Zayn, a surprise invisible voice from the shade tent.

Louis throws himself stomach-first on the blanket and wails into the plush textile fibers of Liam’s thoughtfulness.

 

**

 

It’s probably only pity that makes Zayn agree to play soccer, but Louis will take it. They bring the ball down the sidewalk and past a row of trees to a smaller field that’s free of picnicking families, and wave at the concept of goals by setting up a couple of pillows.

Zayn’s faster ever since he started hiking with Liam, so he gives Louis enough of a run for it that Louis starts working up a sweat. It helps shake the awfulness of...whatever that was with Harry. Anyway it’s all gonna be fine, because Harry comes back with Liam and the beer and seems in a good humor, even if he starts playing on Zayn’s side, expression hidden behind sunglasses.

Louis plays a little too hard, maybe, but Liam plays hard too so he gets away with it. They tie 2:2 in pillow scores, although there’s a debate about one of the goals since the pillow itself stopped the shot. Zayn tackles Liam on the midfield and Niall’s heart wasn’t really in it to begin with, so before Louis realizes what’s happening, he’s been abandoned to fight for the last score with just Harry.

It shouldn’t take long and Louis, frankly, would like to get this whole thing over with and go home and stop trying to decipher Harry’s eyebrows, which look pulled together and unhappy over his sunglasses. But Louis is also categorically incapable of leaving a game unresolved, so he drives fiercely down toward Liam’s poor, vulnerable red couch cushion.

Recently, Louis helped design a level in a puzzle spinoff game that required leading the knight avatar through an enchanted castle where all the actions created an unexpected retaliatory consequence. Moving forward produced a backwards gust of wind, dropping down into a canyon could bounce a player out a moment later.

That’s what it feels like when Louis lines up to take the shot. Louis doesn’t expect Harry to come in from the side with a clumsy side tackle, his long leg slipping on the long grass with a rubbery, skittering sound. It succeeds, shooting the ball out to the side, but they collide in a tangle of feet. Louis is knocked out from behind the ball, falls to the side, and feels his ankle sprain with a nasty, unmistakable jolt.

This is the problem with real, physical games, and real physical parks, and real, physical people. Louis should have known.

“Oh no,” Harry says, frantic and sprawled out on his own backside, but he looks fine. Louis has enough kiddie soccer trophies in his living room to already know that his ankle isn’t fine. He prods at it. It’s already swelling, thick and aching.

“It’s fine,” Louis says unconvincingly. He hopes Niall and Liam and Zayn decide to come back because now he’s trapped on the ground with Harry, who’s sitting down to look at the ankle and whose eyes look very large and guilty, and Louis didn’t know how to interpret his earlier face but this one is even more confusing.

“Is it rolled? Can you walk? Liam has a whole first aid kit,” Harry says. Obviously Liam has a first aid kit. Louis is surprised Liam didn’t kit them all out with walkie-talkies this morning. That would’ve been good, Louis will try to remember it.

He tries to put weight on the ankle and falls back on his ass, grimacing.

“Well, nope,” Louis says. “Guess not. I guess, maybe, Niall’s probably found a St. Bernard by now, we can send for aid.”

Harry’s still sitting very close on the grass, his hands waving indecisively in the air toward Louis’ ankle.

“I could, you know. I could carry you back,” Harry says, carefully, like he’s afraid of offending Louis.

Louis doesn’t mean to but it comes out of nowhere and he actually, physically flinches, away from Harry’s clover-sweet warmth and his tentative hands, his big, pleading eyes.

“Absolutely not,” Louis says.

“Ok, come _on,”_ Harry says, exasperation and something else rolling over his features. Louis stares at him. It’s so rare that Harry looks this way, looks frustrated and maybe even sad. It makes Louis want to curl up in a little ball and go away to the place where things that make Harry Styles sad have to go. Maybe a desk job pumping out never-ending Halo-ripoff storyboards at a multinational conglomerate gaming corporation in the middle of Ohio, or something.

“I know you don’t like me, but you can at least let me help you,” Harry says. And, what? _What?_ It’s so catastrophically wrong, against the turn of the earth. It’s been a very long day and his ankle hurts and it’s been so many weeks of pining, and Louis was never very good at keeping secrets anyway, Louis _loses_ it.

“ _Don’t like you?_ How fucking _dare_ you, Harry Styles!” Louis wails. Harry’s eyes go wide, and it would be almost comical if Louis weren’t entirely occupied by having a complete and total breakdown.

“All I _do_ is like you! Liking you is the entire problem,” Louis has snapped. His brain is now a single red alert tone screeching out in blast. It has, unfortunately, lost the reins of his mouth.

“God! Are you kidding me? I’m trying, ok? I’ve been trying to like, not be weird about it. I’d _like_ it to go away, but I can’t make it. No, I have to have the biggest crush in the world on you, and it’s awful, and I have to watch you trot around this park in those _shorts_ and that _hat_ and we have to have actual _conversations_ and everything and now you’re going to try and what, fucking, _carry me around_ like it’s the end of a fantasy quest, Jesus. Fucking. Christ, Harry, I’m just trying to _live.”_

Louis slaps the ground with his open palms, stupid park, stupid grass, stupid outdoors. Harry’s still so dreadfully close and Louis is gonna shake apart all on his own if he has to keep smelling Harry’s lovely fresh boy smell, if he has to keep feeling the perfect warm press of his body where his thigh is pressing up against the bend in Louis’ knee.

“Oh my god,” Harry says, with...barely concealed glee? Wow, that seems a little mean.

“I’m sorry,” Louis says, “I’m really, sorry? I guess? I didn’t mean to make it a thing, It doesn’t have to be a thing.”

 _Please don’t make it a thing._ It’s wonderful, their group of friends, they’re Louis’ favorite thing in this city even including his job. Despite the ridiculousness of his own heart and the burning embarrassment of this moment, the park day is still one of the nicest days Louis has had in a while. Louis doesn’t want to lose his welcome to the group because of his own inability to not crush on beautiful unattainable boys.

“Oh, it’s a thing,” Harry manages to say around his own stunned amusement. Harry is just blinking at him, like he’s repeating Louis’ awful speech in his head, trying to believe it. Louis winces.

Louis would appreciate this park better if the city had another earthquake and the ground opened up and swallowed him whole.

“Oh my god, Louis,” Harry says, really laughing now, his eyes crinkled and happy. Louis doesn’t quite see how this is _funny_ because after all he’s stranded with his inappropriate crush and he knows exactly how hopeless it is and that hadn’t stopped him from spilling his guts out. Sure, maybe it would never happen but that doesn’t mean that Harry has to _laugh_ about it.

He’s about to say so when Harry kisses him.

Harry _kisses him_. Louis transcends the mortal plane and has to come all the way back to check into his bodily experience, and yep, it’s truly happening. That’s Harry’s mouth, his lips sliding into Louis’ and over the edge of where his bottom lip comes out over his chin. Harry pulling him in close and cradling Louis’ head with his other hand, thumb dragging on his cheek. Louis is too shocked to even think, to move or react or do anything except fall into the kiss with every single fiber in his body. It’s gentle but intent, a full pressure on his mouth. His bottom lip slips with a satisfying friction along the faint trace of Harry’s stubble.

“What,” Louis says, not entirely sure of the workings of his own mouth anymore, so it comes out blurred.

“I’ve been wanting to do that for a million years, or at least since Gemma posted that selfie when you went to that festival thing where she was some kind of elf thing and you were a _princess_ ,” Harry says, a little breathlessly, his face still close enough that Louis can taste his breath, wheaty from their cheap beers and intoxicating from nothing but Harry.

“Festival thing, you mean _Comic Con?”_ Louis asks. Harry just laughs, a little helpless. The throb in Louis’ ankle is _nothing_ compared to the stars that are exploding in his head right now, the way he has to grip into Harry’s arms with surprise. Harry holds him easily, beaming down at him like he’s just played through a final dungeon level and _Louis_ is the prize at the end of the puzzle.

“I thought you thought I was too stuffy,” Harry says with a doleful, rueful little shake of his head. It’s an affront to the very laws of the gay universe because Louis _thinks_ this implies that _Harry_ was insecure about whether _Louis_ would want to do this.

“Thought you thought I was just some public school tosser who couldn’t finish Portal,” Harry says.  

“I went to public school,” Louis says, beyond confused, but also Harry Styles, hottest boy in Golden Gate park, is stroking his fingers around Louis’ forearms and tugging at his hair like he’s allowed, cutting his eyes down to where Louis’ tattoo shows through the v of his tank top, and looking positively ravenous about it. The Portal thing is _not ok_ but Louis is really, really, really good at teaching people how to approach puzzle platformers.

Louis kisses Harry, to see what will happen. Gratifyingly, Harry kisses back and now they’re having a real, genuine make out, on the park in the grass with the sun beating against his closed eyelids and the skin of Harry’s neck silky under his hands, Harry’s necklace hitting into his collarbone, the taste of Harry’s mouth so many different things that Louis has to get his tongue involved again, and again. Harry pushes them down. There’s a brief moment of adjustment for Louis’ ankle, which hurts for an instant but then Harry’s leaning over him on the grass like they’re high schoolers on an abandoned football pitch. Harry’s hair is everything Louis wanted it to be, fits itself around his fingers like a sentient, charming nest of snakes.

“I can’t believe we could’ve been doing this the entire time,” Harry says.

“I, you, what?” Louis manages.

Harry makes some kind of huffing amused noise and just starts kissing him again, which doesn’t do anything to clarify the situation but also Louis is going to just go with it. Harry takes a very long time to explain things; Louis had better be prepared for a long explanation and should get hydration from Liam for it, and new sunblock if the faint prickle of sunburn on his shoulder is anything to judge by.

He’d stay here for the rest of his life probably, get fully enough of the outdoors to satisfy even Zayn, forego oxygen and food and rest just to stay kissing Harry.

“Finally!” Niall yells.

Louis and Harry fall apart, startled. Niall’s come back to their little field carrying two Pomeranians under his arms and he’s wearing a new baseball hat with a picture of a pina colada on it that Louis has never seen before.

“Finally,” Niall says again, with great satisfaction, gesturing a Pomeranian toward the two of them.

“Shut up,” Louis and Harry say at the same time.

“I told you so,” Niall crows. “I _told_ you he’d like you back. God, are we all gonna be happy that your endless despairing three-in-the-morning rants about your crush are over. Took you about as long as a commute over the bay bridge, but you _finally_ kissed him!”

“You never told me that,” Louis says weakly. But three am is a mysterious, shadowy time, so maybe? He can feel that his face is beet red and not with sunburn--but Harry’s got him clutched firmly into his lap and isn’t letting him go, not even for Niall, so he thinks he’s gonna survive.

“Not you,” Harry says, burying his face in Louis’ hair. _Harry Styles_ is _burying his face_ in _Louis’ hair._ What is this life?

 

**

 

Liam has memorized the treatments for most mild injuries, and he rattles off instructions three times before he and Zayn and Niall go out for ramen: elevation, ice, anti-inflammatories, and something to distract Louis from the sprain so that he doesn’t try to use his foot (the last, a warning from Zayn, who suggests duct taping Louis to the sofa).

“I'm on it,” Harry says. He’s on Zayn and Louis’ living room couch with the full length of his legs spread out on their footstool, and he looks so content that Louis can’t stop watching him. Which isn’t really a change from normal, but it feels considerably better.

“I can still show Harry the VR while I’m sitting down the couch,” Louis protests.

“Don’t believe his lies,” Zayn says, “He ran into the wall three times when he was showing me how to do it.”

“You broke three glasses trying to duel with a dragon,” Louis says, “Bring me back ice cream.”

Harry’s got an arm locked around Louis’ waist, half for show and half because, apparently, Harry Styles is a touchy, affectionate person who does things like carry you blocks and blocks back from the park in an only mildly terrifying piggyback ride, and then sit in your living room and order takeout while you show him every dumb game you’ve ever worked on. There are a lot of things that Louis still has to learn about Harry Styles, apparently, but he’s think they’re on the right track.

“We don’t actually have to do this,” Louis says when they’ve all left. “I know you don’t even play.”

Harry takes his face out of Louis’ neck long enough to shoot him a mild glare. “We absolutely do and I want to,” he says. “Plus, you agreed to go to the indie cinema with me, so we’re gonna trade.”

They’ve got a date and everything. It’s tomorrow night, and Zayn had loudly declared that he was going to style Louis for it on the walk home, with Harry in earshot and everything. Harry only cracked his loud, happy donkey laugh, and Niall had spent three blocks demanding that they promise text updates throughout the date until Liam found a Maltese puppy to distract him.

“This is beginning to feel like another bad idea. Sprained ankle traps me, can’t even run away if it’s a terrible time,” Louis says. He’s starting to grin as he taps the controller lightning fast, Harry’s touch a little ticklish on the ridge of his hipbone even through his shirt, the familiar intro music starting to play.

“I’ll just have to make sure it’s not a terrible time,” Harry says, hand hunting for the hem of Louis’ shirt and sending electric sparks through the surface of Louis’ skin. He’s going to break in a second. He’s going to turn around and remind himself that now he gets to kiss Harry instead of just fantasize about it, is going to tangle Harry up in the controller cord and memorize all of the ways he can make Harry’s breath hitch.

But for now he’s gotta get them at least as far as the first narration break, because Harry had better start learning the lore.

**Author's Note:**

> [fic post for this story!](https://helloamhere.tumblr.com/post/174099876338/like-a-walk-in-the-park-by-helloamhere-11k)


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